GEPO – “Good Enough, Press On”. I heard this saying for the first and only time in Banf, Canada while at a collective impact conference (in 2015, I believe) and it’s stuck with me ever since. Groups are forever overthinking, creating bottlenecks that are not useful or necessary, and getting stuck. They forget that sometimes a plan is good enough and it’s time to press on to implementation.
So, since I live in South Carolina and need to add a little Southern charm to the mix, I’d like to make a little change to this acronym. Organizations, your “idea/concept/plan” is Good Enough, Please…Press On! (GEPPO). There is always more information you can collect, more data to analyze, one more survey to send out…one can always dig, and dig, and keep digging. However, the very information you need is right at your fingertips, if you will only recognize that fact. It’s real time data from your customers, from your clients, patients, board members, team members. Success will only happen when you stop analyzing the data or information and start implementing. Your plan is good enough, so please, press on!
When you start implementing (on a small scale, because we are all about quality improvement), what happens will not be perfect. And that’s OK. You are going to get great info and then make changes, tweaks, and enhancements and watch to see what happens. And then do it all over again. That’s the whole point of continuous quality improvement. Your idea is GEPPO, so keep moving! None of the articles, artificial intelligence robots, or pivot tables are going to tell you this. You are going to know this because you’re savvy enough to aim for good enough and not the ever-elusive perfection.
Stay Sharp
Holly Hayes, President & Founder
ISI Consulting
In the summer, I think there’s nothing like a good hot dog with chili, coleslaw, and some shredded cheese. In addition to tasting fabulous, sometimes a good chili dog teaches you a lesson (other than don’t wear a white shirt while eating it!). Just this past week, I was making our homemade hot dog chili, and an incredible revelation hit me. You see, I had all of the ingredients – lean ground beef, yellow onion, garlic, chili powder, mustard, etc. – but I could not make the chili. There was no ketchup to be found anywhere in our kitchen. No Heinz. No Hunts. No house brand even. Nada. No ketchup, no chili. It only takes a cup and a half for my recipe, but it’s an essential ingredient with no substitute. And then it hit me….what I was staring at looks like a lot of organizational teams. They have the people, the plans, and even their “special differentiating factors” but they are missing the one crucial ingredient needed to make things work. They’re a chili recipe with no ketchup.
As I see it, the ketchup for groups is protected time to implement plans and new changes. You see, without the ketchup (and you really don’t need that much) you do not have hot dog chili. Groups need protected time – time when they don’t have a meeting, a phone call, a looming deadline, or whatever, to actually implement the work that has been decided. It doesn’t take a lot – I think for most groups if you just gave folks a day and a half of protected time to process the proposed changes, discuss new goals and objectives, call some key individuals to figure out what is needed, or update key documents with new work flows, you would get to effective implementation a lot quicker. If you don’t, your organizational team is likely to wander around without really accomplishing what you all hoped for.
So, this summer, I encourage you to make some hot dog chili with your team (for real and metaphorically). Dust off the plans and give folks protected time and space to move some ideas closer to the finish line. I promise you’ll enjoy the results.
Stay Sharp,
Holly Hayes, President & Founder
ISI Consulting
